User talk:OtakuMan
OtakuMan, I created a template called "Infobox Enemy" that can be used to store all the statistics for a given enemy in a given game. Here is an example Appearance in Portrait of Ruin Sample Zombie text, bla bla bla (should come after the infobox) Anyways, use this infobox if you like it. Don't feel pressured to do so though. These boxes can be a little unweildy when trying to get them to show up on the screen the way you want them, so see one of my sword pages for an example (ie, Laevatain) on how boxes like these can be used. I am not going to be working on creature pages for the most part, since I have plenty of weapon pages to work on. That's a pretty good infobox there. I think I'll tweak it a little to make it fit for enemies that span across multiple games. Although I think I might try and put game specific enemy info in there. Thanks! :) ~Otaku-Man Ok, to edit this particular template, press the "edit" tab on the template's page just like you would any other page (at Template:Infobox Enemy). This template creates a box with two columns and several rows. Notice the format of this box in the template's edit page. The part after the "style" data is what will be displayed in the left column of this row (will be the same for all pages that use this template), while the part that is below this line in triple braces (" }") is the name of the text that will appear in the right column (this will be different for all pages that use this template). You can change, add, or remove as many rows as you like as long as you keep it in this basic format. Now, update the "Usage" section of the template to have the same row "names" that are in triple braces above ("|name = ") in the same order. Edit the "term description" section with a description of what all the names represent. I hope that helps, I can give you a more general idea of how to create and use templates if you'd like. As far as editting the template to make it more game neutral, I'm not sure if that is a good idea or if I understand your intent. There aren't many "statistics" for an enemy that remain the same across all games. Drop items, defense, even names vary so much by game that you really would need a separate box for each game. Maybe you could create a new template "copy and paste this one" called "Infobox GenericEnemy" that includes data for an enemy that transcends games (such as "games appeared in", "type of creature", an image, "attacks", "abilities", and "lore"). I could create it if you'd like with data you request. Or, by asking that the box be more neutral by game are you referring to the fact that some data doesn't fit certain games. Such as the fact "Skill Points" only makes sense of "Portrait of Ruin" monsters and you don't want it to appear non-Portrait of Ruin monsters' boxes? If that's the case, there is a way to make sure "Skill Points" doesn't show up if you don't enter anything for it, but that is a bit complicated. I should be able to figure it out eventually, but not right away anyways. Looks good Hey, looks great. I'm glad you were able to figure it out. One thing to be aware of (that you probably already are) is once you change the template, you're going to probably have to change all the pages that use that template, so it's obviously best to do as much as possible before using it. You can easily enough tell what pages use a particular template though by clicking on the "What links here" item in the toolbox area of the left pane. As for some feedback, I would recommend using the short name of a game such as Symphony of the Night instead of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night just so the box doesn't get too long. Each game has a shortenned name that will redirect to the long "official" name, that makes references a little easier and less of a mouthfull. I am a little weary of putting all the descriptions for a monster for all games in the same "Description" cell for the same reasons. The box is going to get very long and hard to look at and navigate. That is why I think it is better to have one box per game per creature. It will be easier to find the information you are looking for and easier to look at. But, I am not the one who will be creating the enemy pages, so I will leave it to your judgement. But a box like this can be appropriate for broad enemy types such as "Zombie" used in the generic sense. I don't think having a game-text description in the box is a good idea though, since game descriptions are particular to a very specific zombie "number" in a particular game. I would making your own description to fill in this box or pick a particular game's in-game text as a sample description, but only use one game's text. There will be a lot of ambiguity as to what constitutes a "Zombie" (for the purposes of this box, is a "Wight" considered a Zombie? is a Zombie Dragon a Zombie? a Zombie Officer? Are only enemies called "Zombies" zombies? Will "Wight" have its own genericEnemy box too? Will a Bloody Zombie's abilities be included in the "Ability" box) and things may get a little messy with this box. But that is okay and figuring all that stuff out is part of the fun of making these pages (editors with different ideas on how this stuff should be organized might have some tension though). Anyways, do let me know if there's anything you'd like me to do to help (other than populating data fields, writing articles, checking facts, or doing bulk updates, as I'm putting my main energy into other areas). I'm real glad you are working on enemy pages, since I'd never get around to it. Page Style Hey, is your general page style going to be "put general data in info box" and "put game-specific data directly in article using a header hierarchy" in a manner that looks like the current Zombie page (perhaps because many of the pages already had the description and drop item listed in that manner, and why reinvent to wheel and do rework)? If so, that's cool. The Scheme Oh sweet, I like the scheme. It should work very well. If you are going to use both the general and game-specific enemy boxes, I would recommend using slightly different colors for the two box-types (maybe a darker blue for the general box). I'm too lazy to figure out exactly what color I want for these boxes, so I just picked random hex numbers for the colors until I liked a color I found. But color can be done at any time in the game and doesn't require any updates to enemy pages themselves thankfully. If you'd like, I could look into it further to get a more precise color shade, but I don't really plan on doing that any time soon. If you would like to "borrow a page" from my style for the sword pages, you could paste wikipedia information (and modify as seen fit) about particular type of monster into the page for that monster as the background for the origins of that monster (sure beats copying it from the Castlevania Dungeon or some other web site, Wikipedia is fair game to copy). If you do do this, use the "EnWP" template at the bottom and specify the name of the Wikipedia page that was copied from to give credit to the original authors of that article (see Laevatain for an example). Redirects Hey, I found your article on Whip-Toting Skeletons pretty interesting. Do you know how to do redirects? I made a new page called Simon Wraith. If you click on a link to Simon Wraith, it redirects you to the Whip-Toting Skeletons page, since you indicated that Simon Wraith will always be referred to as a Whip-Toting Skeleton. The nice thing about having this redirect page is that if I made a page for one of the Simon Wraith's drop items, I could refer to Simon Wraith as the enemy that drops the item, but clicking on that link would actually take me to the page that has the goods on the Simon Wraith. To see how the page was made (or edit it), just click on the Simon Wraith link. This will bring up the Whip-Toting Skeletons page, but underneith the title, it will say (Redirected from Simon Wraith). Now click on the link to "Simon Wraith" in that line and it will take you to the actual Simon Wraith page that contains the redirect. You can now edit the page and see how it was done. I also make sure to include categories in this page so that it appears when you are browsing (in case you didn't know a Simon Wraith and Whip-Toting Skeleton were the same thing). For instance, if you are looking at the Category:Monsters page, you will find "Simon Wraith" there. Linking to Drop Items Oh, and you may have noticed that I updated several monster pages so that they contained links to pages pertaining to the items they dropped (I just added double brackets around the drop item names). When referencing a drop item for a monster, please include a link to that drop items. Chances are, there will never be a page created for that item, but it is my pipe-dream that someday every item in Castlevania will have an article here. Hidden Structures Oh sweet, I didn't know that there was a such thing as hidden structures. I'll have to start using them. That will be great for filtering out data not applicable to certain games and make it easier to add new attributes without having to update as many pages. I'm glad you have been able to figure all of this stuff out. Oh, another request for me is to also link to weakness types such as Fire and Weapon. There's not much to these pages yet, but I have started some damage type articles. Its good of you to add the "Steal" attribute, I had forgotten about that one. Weaknesses and Strengths For now, I'm not even paying attention to what I call a particular weakness/strength. I'll call it Slash in on one page, Slashing on another, and Cut on another. Ugh, not to mention Lightning, Thunder, or Electricity. Its hard to be consistant when there's lots of terms that could be used and when different games call them different things. I do plan on sorting it all out one of these days, but for now I'll just make sure there's plenty of redirect pages so that no matter what a page decides to call it, it will always open to the page that it should once the page exists. Oh, and sub-weapons are another thing I don't know if I'll ever get to, so I'm not really messing with those pages at the moment. But the weapons page does seem to only be about subweapons, so its name probably should be changed. Redirects In an earlier message, I wrote something about how to manage redirects. But the quick way is with "#REDIRECT" at the very top of the page followed by a reference. Linking to GameFAQs Pages Hey, so you know, GameFAQs doesn't let you link directly to their faqs (you'll see what I mean if you try to click on a direct hyperlink). When writing down your references, you're going to have to link to a GameFAQ page that itself has a link to the actual FAQ. Damage Types Ok, I did a lot of research to find out what each damage type is called in each game. The results are in List of Damage Types by Game. I would say that the name we use should depend on the game being referred to according to this page. I think the names of the pages that have the articles are at a good point now and don't need to be modified. The word "Sword" was beginning to get over-saturated, so I decided to make the Sword damage type be Sword (Damage Type). It's a pain if you only want it to say "Sword" but link to the damage type page. So, I made a new template called "p" (for parentheses). Using this template, I would specify the Sword damage type by entering . I'm thinking we might want to make similar pages for damage types that are also weapon names. Such as Whip (Damage Type) and Holy Water (Damage Type). What do you think? RE: Damage Types Hmm, the whole problem I was having for the word "Sword" was that I was oversaturating the term. There are too many things that could be put in a Sword category (colloqual non-categorical Sword in general, the Sword type of weapon that distinguishes it from Rapiers, Great Swords, and Katanas, an actual weapon called "Sword" (in Haunted Castle), the class of weapons in Curse of Darkness called Sword used for innocent devil evolutions, and a damage type called "Sword". I am really going to have to create a disambiguous page for Sword and possibly give each of these terms their own terms with clarifiers in parentheses. It is tempting to get rid of the Sword (Damage Type) page and just refer to the Slashing article. It feels a little bit funny including bashing type damage in with slashing for Aria of Sorrow, but that would reduce the number of damage type articles. I could just redirect the Sword (Damage Type) page to Slashing and then have that article sort it all out. Then the hierarchy for weapon damage types would be simply For some games: Slashing (also includes piercing and bashing type damage) For other games: Slashing (also includes piercing type damage) and Bashing For other games: Slashing and Piercing and Bashing Making a separate page for a Holy Water (Damage Type) may not be necessary. It could go either way. Let's not make such pages then. The idea of separating damage types per class (status modifier, elemental, weapon damage) is intriguing. I wanted to include them all in the same big category for the most part just to keep things simple though. The page that discusses damage types (which hasn't been created yet), should probably divide them into these three subcategories though. While I could make three different fields for the items info box, I prefer to keep the number of fields to a minimum. The item info box isn't just used for primary weapons, it will also be used for armor, orbs, use items, sub-weapons, and just about anything you can collect. Most of these objects will only have one "damage type" associated with them. RE: Damage Type - Same Page I don't really think we need a separate infobox for weapons than for any other item. Basically, the items info box is designed to have all the attributes any item that can be dropped or "found" needs. Some of the boxes are generic, but I think the generic items work just fine. Although me adding in "Japanese Name" by hand is a bit clumsy. I originally intended for that box to include anything interesting that might differ between that item and its Japanese or European release counterpart, but the only difference I've seen so far is the Japenese Name. I might want to clean that up and just rename the field Japanese Name once I have the patience to edit a couple dozen pages. I'm not sure if I want to use the item info box for "powers" though. It gets pretty messy when you consider familiars, summoning spells, abilities like double jumping, status curing spells, sub-weapons/skills, item crashes, abilities formed by crossing two assets together, status modifiers that consume mp, and basically abstract ability not neatly defined by an "item". It might make sense to use the box in one game, but maybe not in another. For now, a simple paragraph is doing just fine for these things. Oh, and I will get around to hiding some of the rows. I just want to make sure that the box is not hidden when the row is applicable but not used. I'll need to consider putting in dashes "---", "N/A", or "???" to distinguish between a field that not applicable a particular game, not used by this particular item, or hasn't been determined yet. I really only want to hide the row for the N/A for that game or object type case. Dracula X Chronicles Hey, thanks for that link. It had a great preview and video I hadn't seen yet. I finally have a reason to buy a PSP. I'll probably do that soon so I can play Darkstalkers while waiting for Castlevania to come out. PSP I went to Gamestop today to see what they had for PSP. They had a refurbashed system for $160, so I'll probably end up getting one of those. Darkstalkers was only $15 used. New SOTN Translations Hey, we're going to have a bit of a dilemma once Dracula X Chronicles comes out. They're going to re-translate everything. So the question is, which name are we going to use at the top of our item and enemy boxes? The PS1 or PSP name? I'll probably use the PSP version but then put the PS1 version in parentheses. Oh, and we'll also have to consider what page actually contains the article and which one is a redirect. I'll probably move the articles to their new names and redirect the older names. I'm tempted to do some of that right now by assuming they'll be called what they were in Japanese, but since I don't know the exact translation they'll use, I'll hold off for another seven months... It'll be interesting to see what they call everything. I'm also looking forward to the new descriptions. Maybe I'll finally learn what the "Sword of Helge" is supposed to be. Merger Hi OtakuMan. Please take a look at the Forum:Proposed Merger with Chapel of Resonance Wiki page and let us know what you think of a possible merger with the Chapel of Resonance wiki. Thanks, --Reinhart77 21:06, March 26, 2010 (UTC)